


Over new lands

by 202Dalmations



Category: Archive 81 (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Siblings!, Trans Nicholas Waters, and your dad is an asshole :(, sibling bonding!, trans Christine Anderson but like later, what to do when your half-brother is a NERD and a NARC
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 18:55:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,706
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26542540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/202Dalmations/pseuds/202Dalmations
Summary: Chris meets her half-brother for the first time outside the funeral service she just got kicked out from. It's been a rough day.(Or: a series of drabbles concerning Chris, her brother Nicholas, and the terror and beauty of the expanses beyond them. It's a long story).
Comments: 2
Kudos: 18





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> yes i have another serious deadline, yes i am writing this to avoid it. please enjoy, please appreciate the americanised language i provided on threat of the pain of death. more to come if fate does not strike me down for my audacity.

The first time Chris met her brother, she was trying to light a blunt outside the church. Trying, and failing, for the wind that kept whipping around the corner of the brick wall. 

Chris hadn’t known her father was Catholic. If didn’t really fit with the image of him that she had in her head, the one she had spent the past couple of decades putting together. She had thought that he maybe looked like her – in the sharp jawline she didn’t share with her mother, and the dark, curly hair she’d spent half her life resenting. Her mom had shared a few sparse details when Chris was a teenager: that he had been older than her at the time, that he had been so charming, and that he’d given her mother a golden locket for a lock of her hair (Chris had stopped her mom there; she didn’t want to know the weird sex stuff her absent father got up to). Other things she’d concluded herself – that he was probably awful, with toxic masculinity up the ass, and no desire to ever see his daughter. 

The one phone call she’d gotten just after she’d turned eighteen had confirmed this. Chris still remembered the sound of his stiff, unemotional voice over the buzz of the phone, as she held the receiver in her sweat-slippery grip. She remembered the violent shaking that seemed to go through her whole body, as she told him to _fuck off, why the fuck do you want my blood._ She remembered the click of the call ending after he said goodbye, and feeling equal parts of anger and regret wash over her. 

It seemed like she’d mostly been right. The man in the framed picture atop the casket had shared alarmingly similar features to Chris. He had looked severe, eyes sharp and flinty behind thick rimmed glasses. He didn’t look nice, or welcoming, or lovable. He looked like he had sounded on the phone. He looked like her father.

But the Catholicism had come as a surprise. As did her father’s lawyers, who had efficiently kicked her out before she could even pick a pew to sit out. There hadn’t been much fuss – even Chris wasn’t willing to start a fight at a funeral – and then Chris was outside, listening to the sound of the hymns through the closed front door. 

Chris kicked her boot against the ground, and tried to quell the anger that she was feeling. _He’s dead_ , she repeated to herself. _There’s no point._

But her anger felt like there was a point – one that was four and twenty years coming. Twenty-four years, culminating in being kicked out from a funeral. Even from beyond the grave, it felt like her absent father was having one last cruel dig at her.

Chris had watched, as the service ended, and the congregants quickly exited from the church, heading for the graveyard just beyond it. She didn’t recognise anyone, but that didn’t come as a surprise. Still, she had kept looking through the small crowd, looking for – well, her half-brother, apparently.

But the last of the group had left, and now Chris was alone, leaning against the exterior of the church, trying to smoke some goddamn weed.

Chris tried to light the blunt again, but huffed as the wind snuffed out the flame again.

“Fuck me,” she swore, as viciously as she could. This day really wasn’t going well for her. She was looking forward to going home, going to the bar tonight, and hopefully getting absolutely piss drunk. No better a reason to drink as your absent father’s Catholic funeral. 

“Uh, hi?”

Christine looked up, startled. A few steps in front of her, was now an anxious looking man, pulling at the cuffs of his ill-fitting suit and valiantly trying to make eye contact with her. 

Christine looked at the hair, dark and curly, and at the jawline, and felt something dark lurch in her stomach. “Hey,” she said neutrally. “Nick, right?”

He nodded, and moved from fidgeting with his suit, to push his glasses up. “Uh, Nicholas, but yes. Christine?”

“Chris,” she corrected, straightening up. They were about the same height, she noticed.

“I, uh,” he began slowly, looking very uncomfortable. “I’m sorry, about before. I didn’t realise that—”

“What,” Chris interrupted harshly. “That our dad had blacklisted me from his own funeral?” Already, she could feel the heat of anger spark in her again. Finally, there was a living person that she could give it to – even it was her scrawny, sad looking half-brother.

Nicholas coughed. “Uh, yes. I didn’t know until…” 

“Didn’t know what?” she said, stepping forward. They were almost exactly the same height, but the heel on Chris’ boots brought her about an inch taller than him. 

Nicholas hesitated, and pulled at the cuffs of his sleeves again. “I didn’t know about you,” he said finally, rather quietly.

This gave Chris pause.

“You—” she started, then stopped. “He—he never told you about me?”

Nicholas shook his head, looking tired. “My relationship with my father was… not the best either. So, no.”

A beat. Then: “Fucking hell,” Chris swore.

Nicholas’ eyes flickered to the church behind her, but thankfully, he said nothing. 

Chris was spurred on further. “What the fuck?” she said loudly. “Why- what an asshole!”

“I’m… not inclined to disagree with you there,” Nicholas said slowly, which made Chris laugh. This thin, nerdy looking guy was her half-brother, and they both shared the problem of a shitty, absent father. Well, at least Nicholas had been allowed to attend his fucking funeral – but apparently Chris wasn’t even allowed that. _What the fuck._

She let out a groan, and slumped further against the exterior wall of the church. “Literally dude, this is the worst. I hate that dude.” 

“I am sorry,” Nicholas said, looking extremely awkward. “Had I known about the lawyers, I—”

Chris waved him off. “Dude, it’s—whatever. It’s not your fault, I guess” She paused, breathed, tried and failed to let some of her anger go. “So, you… didn’t know about me, at all?”

Nicholas shook his head. 

“Jesus. Must be pretty fucking surprising for you as well, then.”

Nicholas huffed. “Somewhat.”

Chris let out a breath, and scuffed her boot against the concrete ground. She was an adult – she could goddamn repress all these inconvenient, awful emotions like a goddamn adult. “Okay. So, no father of the year awards for him.” She paused. “Did you meet him, before he died?”

Nicholas looked up, surprised. “Yes,” he said softly. “He—he was around when I was a kid. You never…?”

Chris shook her head, and violently suppressed the feeling of betrayal and jealousy that was creeping up on her. _He had wanted to know Nicholas, and not her. Again, asshole._ “No,” she said shortly. “Well, except for, like, one phone call, but—no.”

“Oh.” 

“Yeah.”

There was a beat of silence, where Chris began considering the quickest and easiest route to getting drunk very quickly. There was a bar a train ride away from here, she could call Andrew, and—

“You really didn’t miss out on much,” Nicholas said quietly. “He wasn’t there a whole lot, and when he was… I don’t really remember too much.”

“I uh,” Christine said, almost at a loss for words now that her anger had died down into resentment and bone deep exhaustion. Surely no one else in the world had had to go through the experience of meeting their half-brother for the first time outside their father’s funeral. Surely no one had ever thought of the right thing to say, like Chris was valiantly trying now. “It… looked like a nice service, before I left,” she offered finally, only barely restraining a wince. 

Nicholas shrugged neutrally. “I suppose,” he said. “I didn’t… Apparently he planned everything out beforehand.”

The sound of _he_ made Chris almost shiver. It was a reminder that her father had been alive, at some point, and had planned his own funeral while dying of some rare form of cancer. That he had been alive, and hadn’t even thought to contact his only daughter again. That he had been alive, and now he was in a casket in some small Catholic church in a largely inaccessible part of New York. 

“Asshole,” Chris swore. “Not you,” she clarified, when Nicholas raised his eyebrows. “Him.”

Nicholas hummed neutrally, and pushed his thick rimmed glasses further up his nose. He then looked over his shoulder, to where the cemetery was behind the church. Chris, following his gaze, could make out the small crowd of people standing around the dug grave in the distance. “Are you going to the burial?” she asked.

Nicholas nodded, and then hesitated. “Do you—you can come, if you want.”

Chris considered it for a half second before shaking her head. “Nah,” she said. “I should go. I don’t think I’d be allowed by those lawyer douchebags, anyway.” 

Nicholas sighed. “Well, I probably should.” He didn’t move, and the absentminded plucking of his cuffs resumed. Chris took a moment to properly look him over. Beyond the familial resemblance, he looked tired, and tightly wound too. There were dark bags under his eyes, and Chris could make out silvery threads of premature grey in his hair. He would probably benefit from the blunt in Chris’ pocket, but Chris doubted that that he would agree with her.  
Another moment, and Nicholas still didn’t move. Chris sighed internally. 

“Look,” she said, trying to sound as chill as she possibly could. “Do you want to get some food or something?”

Nicholas frowned. “No, I should—”. He cut himself off, and looked over to the graveyard.

“But you don’t have to, right?” 

Nicholas looked at her again. “I, uh,” he started slowly. “I suppose not.”

She shrugged, trying to look as casual as she could when talking to her half-brother for the first time at her absent father’s funeral. “Well, alright then. Come get some food with me, dude.”

Nicholas visibly deliberated this, before nodding. “Alright, fine. Sounds good.”

“Okay, sweet,” Chris said. She threw her bag over her shoulder, looked out of him out of the side of her eye. Her half-brother. 

Other than looks, they didn’t look alike or act alike. Chris had expected that. Nurture over nature, in her opinion. But it was still jarring – to have someone in front of her that shared partly the same DNA. That shared the same asshole father with her. That was a connection, right?

Like every other only child, Chris had always wanted a brother or sister growing up. Looking back, that was most likely because she had been a lonely kid with a mom who worked full-time. Don’t get her wrong, her mom loved her, and that was enough for Chris, but she remembered wanting – more. Someone else to share everything with.

That feeling had passed as she grew up, but now – now there was this nerdy looking, dark haired guy in front of her, who was her brother. It was… something, to say the least. 

“So,” she started. “I was lying before. That looked like a really weird service. Like, _really weird_. I was glad that they kicked me out, honestly.”

Nicholas paused, and then chuckled, the sound low and soft. “It was rather odd.”

Chris slung her bag over her shoulder, making the decision to not look over her shoulder to the graveyard. Better to leave some things alone. “Let’s get out of here.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is part of an elaborate AU where Americans have kettles and use said kettles to make tea. no i will not stop <3  
> also i love star trek so all jks come from a place of love

Nick wasn’t sleeping. 

Chris could hear him at night, pacing the halls of their father’s brownstone. From the dining room, to the front, door, upstairs to the bathroom, and back down again. Repeat, again and again, for hours at a time. 

Of course, this also meant that Chris wasn’t sleeping either, but Chris had made her peace with that when she first moved in. She was never going to sleep well in the house of her deceased, asshole father. It was too still, compared to the apartments and dorms she’d lived in before, where it had been all noise and bustle and people. Now it was just her and Nicholas, with creepy art lining the walls, and terrible water pressure. 

(There were other reasons as well. Ever since their trip to Ms Roland, the silence of the house had been even more stark. In her broken-up dreams, she remembered a home that lived and breathed. In waking, Chris would run her hand over the wall behind the bed’s headboard – as if she was waiting to feel a heartbeat.) 

Chris had expected this. She, like any other normal person, just waited it out. Tried to read a couple of books, or play a stupid game on her new phone. Sometimes, she made a game out of counting the amount of creepy shit that was in each room (a lot, it was a lot). Nicholas though, it seemed, had different ideas. Chris had gotten used to the sound of his socked feet going over the wooden flooring, the soft, uneven shush shush shush followed by the hollow thud of his cane. He never spoke about it in the morning, but both of them would have matching bags under their eyes. 

Chris didn’t think Nicholas had the same reasons as her in his restlessness. He was unnerved by the house, sure, but there was something else to it. There was a fervour to him, a hunger that seemed to follow him night and day, one that didn’t allow him to rest for long. The ritual, the ritual, the ritual – there was little space in his world that wasn’t taken up by it, Chris knew. Chris wanted it as well – but she had other things to think about as well.

Tonight seemed particularly bad. Just as soon as Christine switched her light off, Nick had started pacing. His leg was acting up tonight, and the cane thumped into the floor like a metronome. Upstairs, downstairs, away from Chris, fainter and fainter. 

Chris had groaned, and closed her eyes. 

Chris managed to get a couple of hours of sleep before she woke again. She’d had a dream, one that slipped away as she sat up in bed. She’d been in the water – the ocean, maybe? The water had been a deep, unrelenting blue, and she remembered looking to the surface, where the sun was, and – It was gone. Chris sighed, switched the light on. Her dreams had been frequent, and unsettling lately – always leaving her with the feeling that there was something she’d forgotten, something she’d left behind. That she’d left something behind while unconscious at Ms Roland’s, along with the colour of her hair.

The hair was still surprising her. Christine startled as she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, hair bright in the low light. She wouldn’t lie, it was growing on her, but still. She missed her old hair, kind of. She brushed out her curls with her fingers, and tied it back against with the hair-tie on her wrist, before opening the bedroom door. There was little chance she was getting back to sleep for a while; she might as well get a cup of water and check on her stubborn half-brother.

Outside it was dark, but Chris could sill hear the faint sound of Nick somewhere in the house shifting around, floorboards creaking as he did so. Upstairs, maybe?

Chris made her way to the kitchen. This too was dark, but she’d gained some sort of familiarity with it in the past few weeks. Familiarity did raise uncomfortable thoughts and feelings about living in her biological dad’s house, but Chris had largely managed to kill these off before they came to fruition. The last thing she needed, especially while in the middle of a ritual, was to bring daddy issues into it. 

The tapping grew louder, as Chris filled a cup with water, drained it, and refilled it. She’d only finished the second cup when Nicolas grew closer. A shadow appeared at the door, and Chris watched him for a moment, before speaking.

“Hey Nick,” she said. 

Nick yelped, his cane slipping against the floor as he startled. “Jesus,” he hissed, as Chris started to laugh. “Christine, don’t do that, fuck.”

Chris shrugged. “Sorry dude. It was too easy.”

Nick sighed, and rubbed a hand across his face. Even in the dark, Chris could tell that he was exhausted – from the hollow sound of his voice, to the extra weight he was putting on his cane. “I’m guessing you can’t sleep either?” he asked drily, as he walked towards Chris.

“Nope,” Chris said. She watched as Nick filled the kettle, and switched it on at the wall. 

“Want to talk about it?” he asked. The kettle began to hum softly, and Christine shook her head. 

“Definitely not. Do you?”

“Oh, definitely not,” Nicholas returned just as quickly. “Do you want tea?”

Chris shrugged. “Sure.”

Nick retrieved mugs from a cupboard, and the box of teabags had had at the back of the pantry. Chris had so far avoided the tea – she was a coffee person, through and through – but Nicholas made one for himself every morning. It didn’t look… bad, plus even the idea of coffee right now was giving her a headache. 

Soon after, the kettle boiled, and Nick deposited one steaming mug in front of Chris. The tea bag had ‘CAMOMILE FOR SLEEP’ printed on the tag, to her quiet amusement.

“Are you… going to go back to sleep?” Nick asked, cradling his own mug between both his hands. Cane now abandoned, he was leaning up against the kitchen counter. 

Chris shook her head. As tired as she felt, it was unlikely she would sleep again tonight. “Are you… going to sleep?” she asked. 

Nicholas shrugged, though the expression on his face looked rather pained. “Probably not tonight, I think.”

There was a beat of silence, before Nicholas talked again. 

“I… Sometimes, I just have too many things to think about. It makes it difficult to sleep,” he said slowly, reluctantly.

Chris nodded. “I get that.”

“Yeah.”

At this, Nicholas straightened up again, mug in hand. Painfully, he shifted the weight between his good leg and his bad leg, and reached for his cane. 

“Dude,” she said. “If you’re not going to sleep, you should sit down at least. You’re making me feel tired just looking at you.”

For a moment, Nick’s shoulders rose around his ears, and he looked ready to snap a retort, but a moment passed, and he sighed. “That is probably smart,” he said. “Do you want to watch some TV?”

This found Chris and Nick both slumped on the uncomfortable mid-century sofa in the lounge room. Nick’s laptop was on the coffee table in front of them.

“I still can’t believe he didn’t have a TV,” Chris said incredulously, for the third time. “Or a computer. Who does that?”

Nicholas huffed. “Old people, usually.” He was typing at his computer, bringing up Netflix or something. If Chris had more energy, she would have made fun of Nick for that. Of course, he would never stream something illegally. She’d have to make a note for the morning. 

“What are we watching?” Chris asked, bringing her knees up to her chest. The mid-century sofa was wooden, with only a thin layer of cushion over the top. It was very uncomfortable. 

“Well,” Nicholas started. “I know you said you weren’t much of a sci-fi fan, but—”

“Hey,” Chris interrupted. “I like sci-fi, I just don’t like Star Trek. If I wanted to watch some weirdly sexist, low key racist tv show, there are plenty better ones to pick from.”

Nicholas sighed. “Right, fine. I have Star Wars saved on my hard drive, if that’s alright?”

“Depends: originals or prequels.”

“Oh, originals.”

“Dude, nice!”

“God, I used to have such a crush on Luke when I was a kid.” Chris thought out loud, as the aforementioned man shook his blond tresses on screen. 

Nicholas looked over. “Yeah? Not Han?”

Chris laughed. “Han too. And Leia as well, really.”

“So – all of them, really.”

Chris nodded. “And the prequels were good as well. Natalie Portman was such a babe.” She looked over to Nicholas. “Who did you like?”

Nicholas was silent for a moment, considering. “Uh, Han, I think? Or Obi-Wan, when I was a teenager.”

“Really, not Luke?”

He shrugged. “I liked Luke, I just—” he paused, and Chris could see him thinking something over. “I think as a kid, I just wanted to be like him, really.”

“Aw,” Chris said. “Did you have a little lightsaber? Did you go as him for Halloween?”

Nicholas huffed. “No. Mom wouldn’t let me. I wanted to, though.”

Chris and Nicholas proceeded to watch Luke grieve over his aunt and uncle in a very cute, twinkish way. Even now, Chris could appreciate a young Mark Hamill. 

“I—” Nick started after about ten minutes, and then stopped. “You know I’m trans, right?”

Chris straightened up. “Uh, yeah,” she said. “I guess I kind of knew?” Nicholas was stiff and awkward, but he wasn’t hiding, Chris knew this. She’d drawn her own conclusions a while ago, from a few things Nick had said, and the trans pride pin he had on his backpack. There’d been a photo too, from when he had been a scrawny kid. “But, like, thank you for telling me, dude.”

Nicholas shrugged. “It’s not a big deal.”

“Still.”

They lapsed into silence. Chris thought of saying something, but then thought better of it. Instead, she slumped onto a pillow, and watched the movie with half-closed eyes. 

Some indeterminate time later, Chris woke from another forgettable dream. This one had left tears blurring her vision, but the details still escaped her, frustratingly enough. She looked across the sofa, to where Nicholas had fallen asleep. Head tilted back against the back of the couch, he was snoring softly. He looked almost peaceful, if not for the furrowed brow, and the occasional twitch he gave, like a sleeping dog. 

At some point, his jacket had ended up draped over Chris’ side. At the sight of it, Chris felt something warm in her, and she closed her eyes once again.


End file.
